President Higgins leads tributes to Kerry-based artist Pauline Bewick
The late Kerry artist Pauline Bewick pictured at work in her studio near Glenbeigh, County Kerry. Picture: Don MacMonagle
President Michael D Higgins has led the tributes to artist Pauline Bewick, who has passed away at her home in Co Kerry.
Bewick, 86, had battled cancer, and died at her home in Treanmanagh, Glenbeigh, on Thursday night, surrounded by her family.
President Higgins recalled Bewick’s vist to Áras an Uachtaráin in 2019, and his own trip to the artist’s Kerry studio last November. “Sabina and I were so honoured to have this time with Pauline and her daughters, in the presence of so much of her lifetime’s work - watercolours, tapestries, wall-hangings and sketches, all expressions of what was a unique and original creative talent,” said President Higgins.
“It was there to her studio in Kerry where she always returned and where Pauline spent so many years, between all her travels, with her family while producing works of astonishing artistic brilliance.”
Bewick was born in England, but moved to Ireland with her mother Harry as a child. She studied at the National College of Art and Design, and had her first solo exhibition at the Clog Gallery in Dublin in 1957.
In 1963, she married the psychiatrist Patrick Melia. They lived in Dublin for a time, before settling in Co Kerry.
In 2018, Bewick told the Irish Examiner about adjusting to life after a stroke. “The stroke has opened another door in my head and paintings that come out of that dark hole are really, really good,” she said.
She also spoke of her love for Melia, who had passed away following a battle with Alzheimer’s two years previously. “I would get a crush, or fall for somebody and then I would go back to Pat. In the large sum of life, it was always Pat I loved.”
Bewick was a member of Aosdána and the Royal Hibernian Academy. She showed at prestigious venues such as the Taylor Galleries in Dublin, and her work was in many public collections, including that of the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork.
“We would have borrowed work from Pauline for a number of group exhibitions over the years,” says Anne Boddaert, curator at the Crawford. “We had also acquired a large painting of hers, called Family, Co Wicklow, for our collection. Pauline was a regular visitor to the gallery, viewing other artists’ exhibitions. She was a really interesting painter, and a great character.”
In 2005, Bewick donated more than 500 artworks to the Irish State. The Seven Ages Collection represented the various stages of a woman’s life, and included watercolours, wall hangings and tapestries, along with sketches she had produced as a child. The works are now on permanent display in Waterford and Kerry.
In 2019, Bewick was presented with the Kerry Association in Dublin Arts Award by President Michael D Higgins and Sabina at a ceremony in Aras an Uachtaráin. On that occasion, President Higgins described how, “for Pauline, art is about freedom, the freedom to imagine all that is possible, to create worlds without boundaries, unconditional landscapes where anything is conceivable.”
Bewick is survived by their daughters Poppy and Holly and their families.
